Year Of The Horse

Concert films don't much lend themselves to close analysis, so here's the skinny: if you like Neil Young and Crazy Horse, you'll likely enjoy Jim Jarmusch's tour documentary, Year of the Horse; if you don't, probably you won't. Hip director or no (Jarmusch is the auteur of such acclaimed fiction films as Stranger than Paradise and Mystery Train), Horse is utterly representative of this generally nondescript genre: lots of live footage (great if you like the tunes, tedious if not--especially since Crazy Horse is prone to turning a three-minute pop song into a 13-minute extended jam) interspersed with backstage hijinks and banal interviews with the band members. Jarmusch includes a few entertaining arguments from various previous tours (shot by god knows who), but his present-day Q&As are of interest only to rabid aficionados, and a little of his hallucinogenic road footage goes rather a long way. But, to his credit, it's the rock 'n roll that's front and center, and anybody who owns a worn-out copy of Zuma shouldn't miss this. Recommended. (M. D'Angelo)